Fiction

A Mystery to Solve

by Sarthak Sharma

It was the Fourth of July. Start of the month and I was down to my last bucks. I had got no job offers in over two months. I played with my small Rubik’s Cube. Solved it for the thousandth time in the month. In the dark alley, I was alone. I fished my pocket for a cigarette but found only a matchbox that too was down to its last four matches. Down on the ground lay a few cigarette butts. I picked the neatest-looking one and lit a match to the small cigarette I had put between my lips. I dragged two drags and threw it away. Exhaling smoke and spitting after. The dark alley had found in me its sole inhabitant and I was trying to find in it a mystery. A puzzle. Or maybe the movies had gotten to me. All the detectives in the movies strolled around the dark alleys. The dark alleys held a mystery of their own. Maybe they could give me one to solve.
I was a private detective. A few of them are still alive in the non-fictional world. The last few years had been tough. No big cases came my way. Usually, a month involved 2-3 cases of checking up whether someone’s spouse was cheating on them. I loathed these cases and played around with the clients for a few weeks. Asking them for money weekly to find evidence. Yeah, I am tracking the guy down. I would lie to the jealous husband while I watched TV. If someone had to hire a private eye to find out if their woman was cheating on them then indeed their woman was. They suffered denialism and were paying someone to speak the truth for them. They needed the truth, not a detective. After some weeks I would tell them hey your woman is clean no man found without ever making any move. They would believe because they wanted to and I would get paid for doing nothing. Just telling a lie. A lie that would make them feel nice for a little while. Both I and my client went to bed happy. And their woman too with some other man.
But I hadn’t got the opportunity in a while of fighting even such cases. I looked at the ground and then picked another cigarette butt. The brand of this particular cigarette reminded me of a case I had solved. I smiled, pulled in three drags, and thought of the salad days. My very own Sherlock days. I had solved a big burglary mystery. The burglar had broken into a jewelry store and stolen all the jewelry leaving no clues. Only smoked out cigarette butts.
The owner of the store told me the police had said it was a closed case with no shot at getting to the criminal. The criminal had done his job efficiently I agreed to that but wherever men went they left a piece of them and that piece could always help us find our way to that person. That’s what I told the owner and assured him that I would find the criminal.
 Smokers are particular about their brands. I looked at the butts. They were of this particularly rare brand that usually only women chose to smoke. I drove around town finding all the shops that stocked this brand of cigarette up in the vicinity and there were less than ten. Of these less than ten shops only three had a guy and not a girl bought a packet of these smokes during the day of the burglary and the day before. The men behind the counter at these three shops promised to ring up when the guy who had bought those cigarettes around those two days arrived asking again for the cigarettes. I told the owners of these three shop tell the man that comes asking to wait a while after making the purchase. What do I tell them? They asked. They had won a lottery for being the lucky customer buying that cigarette.
What is the lottery prize? The men behind the counter asked.
A carton full of that criminal loved smoke was their prize.  I knew by experience that smokers love more smoke especially when it came free.
The first call arrived the same day. I went for the check. The man was old and could hardly walk at an average pace. Too slow to do the burglary. More the molestation material. Looks aren’t deceptive usually and mostly a mystery is resolved in a quick educated glance. A good guess. That’s what the courts did too. They just took longer than I did. I walked away from that store.
The second call came. The guy was big. Murder material. I struck a conversation. Asked him what he did. He owned a big gym. The biggest in the area. He told me proudly. The owner glanced at me smilingly as if thinking he had helped me hunt my catch. Nah. I shook my head smilingly signaling the truth to him and asked for a packet of my brand of smokes and left. Have a good day. I told the murderer before leaving. Maybe I would catch him in some other case someday. I felt satisfied as I left. I knew the final call would lead me to the burglar.
The next day the call came. I raced to the shop. The guy had asked for five packets of the smoke while he usually bought only a single one. The shop owner told me over the phone. I entered the place and glanced at the smoker. He was skinny and looked like someone who wasn’t a criminal. That’s how the burglars usually looked. He also looked too happy for someone who smokes. I approached him while he waited to get his prize. Have you heard about the lottery win that the cigarette led to? I asked. He was gonna reply but before he could, I struck my right hand against the left of his face and said it was rhetorical and the answer is a thousand dollars for me.
I smiled at the flashback and was brought back to reality by the cigarette finishing between my fingers, burning them. I was neat. That guy was the burglar. He got 20 years in prison. Now he must be in his fifteenth. I used to be good. Used to be or still am? I thought but then flickered it away. It was the industry that was in decline, not me. I was still as sharp as ever. I pulled the Rubik’s Cube out. Messed it and then solved it again in a matter of some quick seconds. I heard sirens in distance. Someone had called the police when they should have called me. It had begun to rain. My nostalgia was heavy for the clouds. I picked up a cigarette butt. Too damp. I threw it into a puddle that had formed. I sighed at the thought of all the criminals behind bars because of me. Then my stomach rumbled and I began to walk back in the rain. I had to make money. Now that was a mystery to solve.
About the Author:
Sarthak majored in Literature from Hindu College, University of Delhi. He finds honesty as the most important parameter of judging a person or a person’s work and tries to imbibe the same in his persona and stories. 

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